A stock photo of SAT test scores. A score of 1600 is circled in red colored pencil.

Celebrities and wealthy parents involved in the college admissions bribery scheme which recently made headlines took advantage of testing accommodations meant for students with disabilities, federal authorities say. According to court documents, the parents were instructed to lie in order to secure extra time and a private room for their kids to take the SAT or ACT. The parents were told to falsely claim that their children had learning disabilities–and to obtain the necessary medical documentation for proof.

For students with learning disabilities, there is often a discrepancy between academic performance and their intelligence. Advocates for students with learning disabilities believe the scandal could make it harder for students with actual learning disabilities to get the test-taking accommodations they need.

A photographic portrait of the late disability rights advocate Carrie Ann Lucas. (Photo: Carrie Ann Lucas’s Facebook page)
Carrie Ann Lucas, a disability rights activist, died in late February because her health insurer declined to pay for her necessary medication.

When a cold turned into a lung infection in January 2018, Lucas, who was ventilator-dependent, needed antibiotics, but her insurer balked at the cost of the most effective medication available, setting off a cascade of events that left her in ill health for much of 2018.

While a New York Times obituary praised Carrie Ann Lucas for her many achievements as an advocate and activist, the obit did not mention the real cause of her death.

The National Center on Disability and Journalism at Arizona State University has released its popular disability language style guide in Spanish.

The NCDJ, which is headquartered at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, provides guidance and support for journalists and communications professionals as they write about and report on disability issues and people with disabilities.

The style guide was recently updated to contain nearly 200 words and terms commonly used when referring to people with disabilities.

“The guide is used around the world but until now has been available primarily in English,” said NCDJ Executive Director Kristin Gilger, the senior associate dean at the Cronkite School. “The new Spanish-language version will make it possible for us to reach far more people with advice on disability-related language choices.”

She said the guide is not prescriptive. Instead, recommendations are intended to help communications professionals avoid offensive language while also being clear and accurate.

The Spanish translation of the guide was made possible by a grant from the Ford Foundation, which provides support for NCDJ programs and services.

In addition to the style guide, the center administers an annual contest recognizing the best reporting on disability in the country and provides training and resources for journalists, public relations professionals, educators and others concerned about how people with disability are portrayed.

Both the English and Spanish versions of the disability language style guide are available in downloadable format at https://ncdj.org/style-guide/.

The Society of Professional Journalists recently highlighted the NCDJ style guide on its website.

Earlier this week the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) featured our disability language style guide on its Journalist’s Toolbox website, which highlights digital resources to help journalists in their reporting. As the SPJ site points out, a Spanish-language version of the NCDJ style guide is now available on NCDJ.org. Journalists can access the guide in both languages on our website.

Page two of Gov. Ducey’s Executive Order 2019-03, showing his signature and the Arizona state seal. (Image: azgovernor.gov)

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey is ordering three state agencies to do a better job protecting Arizona’s most vulnerable residents. The executive order he issued on Wednesday comes one week after the Arizona Developmental Disabilities Planning Council issued a report calling for the state to implement stronger protections for its residents with disabilities.

Some say the governor’s executive order is a good “first step,” but more work is needed to create policies that adequately protect Arizonans with disabilities who reside in long-term care facilities.

While the recent crisis at Hacienda HealthCare continues to draw attention to problems within Arizona’s current system of monitoring and reporting sexual abuse of people with disabilities, almost no formal policies designed to recognize and prevent such abuse exist. The Council’s report is called “Sexual Abuse of Arizonans with Developmental and Other Disabilities” and it contains specific actions that state agencies and care providers can take to prevent the sexual abuse of vulnerable adults.

A photo of the Domino’s app interface on a smartphone. There’s a lack of clarity about how the ADA applies to the modern internet.

On January 15, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the Domino’s Pizza website and mobile app must comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and be made fully accessible to people with visual impairments. The court reasoned that the ADA applies to Domino’s digital properties because their inaccessibility “impedes access to goods and services of its physical pizza franchises—which are places of public accommodation.”

A blind customer first sued the pizza chain in 2016, saying he couldn’t order a pizza through its website or app, since neither were compatible with standard screen reading software. And while the legal landscape regarding online accessibility is still uncertain, the Domino’s case may set an important legal precedent regarding the scope of the ADA.

Read more about the case here, or click here to download a PDF of the ruling.

A class-action lawsuit claims dockless scooters violate the ADA because they obstruct sidewalks and other public access areas. This photo shows two Bird scooters parked on a sidewalk.

Disability Rights California (DCA), a non-profit disabilities rights group, has filed a class-action lawsuit against the city of San Diego and three dockless scooter companies. The lawsuit names San Diego and scooter companies Bird, Lime, and Razor as violating the Americans with Disabilities Act by obstructing the city’s sidewalks, crosswalks, transit stops, and curb ramps. Put more simply, the plaintiffs say the scooters render San Diego’s public walkways inaccessible for people with visual and mobility impairments.

Phoenix Ai, a finalist in the competition, is an ultra-lightweight, self-balancing, intelligent wheelchair.

Toyota announced five finalists for its Mobility Unlimited Challenge at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas yesterday. Launched in 2017, the Mobility Unlimited Challenge is a contest that invites engineers, inventors, and designers from around the world to rethink the conventional wheelchair and develop a new way for people with lower-limb paralysis to get around. Each of the finalists will receive a grant of $500,000 to develop their concept further, with the final winner receiving $1 million in Tokyo in 2020.

Click here to read more about the competition online, or click here to download a PDF file of Toyota’s press release.

The Ford Foundation has produced a short video that shows why disability rights are central to social justice work. You can read more about the Ford Foundation’s policy about including disabled people in their work here. To watch the video on the Foundation’s Facebook page, click here.